This essay is based on a June 2014 interview with Bernard Spolsky, in which he discussed his life with educational linguistics. A self-described "accidental professor," Spolsky directed the first study of Navajo sociolinguistics, established educational linguistics as a field of study and practice, co-created a national language policy…

This paper examines the attempts made by the renewing kibbutzim to maintain their way of life as much as possible through the adjustment of their gating mechanisms. In this type of a rural gated community, sorting procedures and admittance criteria of nonmembers are the most notable elements. Background material and interviews with informants at…

Juliano Khamis was born in Nazareth to a Palestinian father and a Jewish mother who had lived in Jenin for many years and supported the Palestinian opposition to the Israeli occupation. Juliano's mother Arna Mer Khamis established Elhajar Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp in the Occupied West Bank with money awarded to her as winner of the Right…

This article offers a critical appraisal of the role played by cultural identity in intercultural bilingual Arabic-Hebrew schools in Israel. While engineered as oases of interculturalism amidst a life of ethnic segregation, such schools ultimately confront serious difficulties in escaping the constraints of identity politics and representation.…

The Naphtali Herz Imber Jewish Day School proudly proclaimed its commitment to Israel, yet many of its students experienced profound ambivalence toward the Jewish State. Why? The school was committed to a series of contradictory values which surfaced in its approach to Israel education. This article outlines three distinct yet interrelated…

This article describes results from interviews with Jewish teenagers about the tension between adherence to tradition and commitment to egalitarianism in relation to issues like women in the rabbinate, women wearing ritual garments like "kipot" and "talitot", and gender separation at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. For many…

Interest by American educators in the Holocaust has increased exponentially during the second half of the twentieth century. In 1960 the Holocaust was barely being addressed in American public schools. Yet by the 1990s several states had mandated the teaching of the event. Drawing upon a variety of sources including unpublished works and…

This article describes aspects of the relocation of schools from the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip ("Gush Katif") after implementation of the disengagement plan in summer 2005. The study describes "successful" and "unsuccessful" relocated schools in the eyes of parents and the impact of the schools' new…

This is a study of the transgenerational effects of the Holocaust as manifested by one family in the United States. It looks at three generations from the perspective of a member of the third generation and attempts to connect research to her family. The study examines two married survivors, their two children, and the survivors' grandchildren…

Religious leaders from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths were interviewed about their understanding of the intersection of intimate partner violence (IPV) and religion, and a grounded-theory analysis was conducted. The present manuscript explored the leaders' beliefs about the partners' responsibility for IPV and the role of divorce. Although…

This article discusses the Carnegie Foundation's newly released report, "Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination," and offers recommendations on how to develop specific skills needed to perform the functions that pastors must enact, while also giving them the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to become the kinds…

Presents an interview with a Holocaust survivor as a means of showing how the interviewing process can support and personalize well-written historical fiction for children. (TB)

Against the backdrop of growing conflicts in Israeli society and concerns about its democratic character, the current curriculum guidelines and official textbook for civic education in Israel were set to offer a more inclusive civic education that would stress ideas such as pluralistic and democratic citizenship. However, this curriculum does not…

Tzipora Jochsberger (1920-) educator, composer, and musicologist, dreamed of using the arts to introduce Jews to the richness of their heritage. The founder and director of the Hebrew Arts School in New York (1952-1986), Jochsberger's contributions deserve the attention of Jewish educators and artists who are looking to the arts to address the…

Apart from the conflict between Arabs and Jews, two types of inter-group relations are the foci of social strain within the Jewish community of Israel: (1) inter-ethnic relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, and (2) relations between the religious and the nonreligious. Since 1967, the continuing survey of the Guttman Institute has been…